05 Mar Case Study: Blue Fire Street Festival Promo Video
What is Blue Fire Street Festival?
Blue Fire Street Festival is a free, open-air arts and culture event held in Smithfield Square in Dublin. The festival celebrates local food, music, and dance, and is largely volunteer-run. Smithfield Square — one of Dublin’s largest public spaces — provides a natural stage for the community atmosphere the event is built around.
What was the video brief?
The Blue Fire team commissioned Idiosync Films to produce a highlights video serving two distinct purposes: a public-facing celebration of the event, and supporting material for future funding applications. The video needed to resonate with two very different audiences — general festivalgoers and grant decision-makers — while capturing the energy, colour, and community spirit of the day.
What were the production challenges?
Filming an open-air festival in Ireland always carries weather risk. On this occasion the conditions were favourable, but the more significant challenge was logistical: a festival crowd changes throughout the day, and capturing every key element — food stalls, dance performances, live music, candid reactions — required constant awareness of where the energy was at any given moment.
How did Idiosync Films approach the concept?
Research into how other festivals market themselves informed the creative direction. The core visual strategy centred on authentic human reactions — smiling faces, laughter, dancing — as the most honest and persuasive evidence of an event’s success. This approach is well established in festival and live event videography because it communicates atmosphere in a way that wide establishing shots alone cannot.
The plan combined wide shots of key locations across Smithfield Square with slow-motion close-ups of moments of joy, movement toward sounds of cheering and laughter, and an interview with the Festival Director to provide narrative context.
What equipment was used?
The production was deliberately lean and mobile. Equipment included a cinema camera, zoom lens, neutral density filter, audio recorder, and shotgun microphone. A small LED light was packed as a contingency for low-light conditions, though the band stage at night was well lit. Shooting in a run-and-gun style with minimal gear allowed the single videographer to move freely across the square and react quickly to unplanned moments.
How was the footage edited?
All festival footage was captured in slow motion at 60fps, with the Festival Director interview shot at 25fps. In post-production, a high-energy, upbeat editing style was chosen to match the music and reflect the family and community feel of the event. Colours were heavily saturated in the grade to make the flags, costumes, face paints, and food visually vivid. The Blue Fire Street Festival logo was incorporated as a closing graphic to reinforce brand recognition.
What was the final deliverable?
Idiosync Films delivered a three-minute highlights video in landscape 16:9 full HD, with an additional square-format version provided for social media use. The full edit was completed within one week of the festival.
How was the video used?
The highlights video was submitted as part of Blue Fire Street Festival’s funding applications for the following year’s event. The festival team confirmed the video supported their fundraising efforts and their plans to grow the festival in future editions.
What would Idiosync Films recommend for similar projects?
The primary lesson from this production was the value of a second camera operator. A second videographer equipped with a dedicated shotgun microphone would capture environmental sound — music, crowd noise, cooking, laughter — that significantly expands editing options in post-production and adds another sensory layer to a highlights video. For any festival or live event video production, environmental audio is as important as the visuals.
What does this project demonstrate about event video production in Ireland?
Festival highlights videos serve a dual function that is often underestimated: they are both a marketing asset and a fundraising tool. A well-produced highlights video gives an event credibility with funders, extends the event’s life on social media, and builds anticipation for future editions. For community events operating on limited budgets, a focused single-camera production — planned carefully and executed with the right creative approach — can deliver significant return on investment.
Idiosync Films produces event and festival highlight videos for organisations across Ireland. Contact us to discuss your next project.